Eric Isbister, the C.E.O. of GenMet, a metal-fabricating manufacturer outside Milwaukee, told me that he would hire as many skilled workers as show up at his door. Last year, he received 1,051 applications and found only 25 people who were qualified. He hired all of them, but soon had to fire 15. Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which can rise to $18 an hour after several years of good performance. From what I understand, a new shift manager at a nearby McDonald’s can earn around $14 an hour.

The McDonald's job is probably more secure than the manufacturing job too. In the last 20 years employment of high school drop-outs in manufacturing has dropped in half (see next link). As manufacturing equipment becomes even more automated the prospects for assembly line workers will get even worse.

Among Americans aged 25 to 34—the youngest group that would have completed college under a traditional schedule—the unemployment rate for bachelor's degree holders was 4.1%, versus 11% for those with only a high-school diploma and 9.8% for those who began college but didn't finish.

High school drop-outs are at 12.2% unemployment. These numbers underestimate the differences in employment rates due to lower labor market participation rates and higher prison participation rates among those with lower IQ scores and educational attainments.

At some point a libertarian realizes that there are like 6 billion poor people in the world and letting them all in would be a disaster. He either then becomes some kind of conservative who takes a pragmatic approach to things, or he becomes disastrously committed to libertarian orthodoxy no matter how terrible the real world effect.

What amazes me is just how much realism has lost hold on the mainstream of American political life. You might that stagnant and declining living standards for the bottom half would be enough to wake up people. But no.

Re: "What are the least skilled people going to do in 20 years?" Simple. They're going to kill us and take our shit. America has, for the last 20 years that I've been aware, advanced an official line that those who have more stuff have stolen it from those who have less. When they come to have nothing and believe it's because we stole from them, violence will be inevitable.